Roselily

“Roselily” is a story about the sacrifices Black women make to survive, and reflects the experiences of Black women who lived in the South in the wake of the Civil Rights movement. The main character, Roselily, is in the process of moving from one compromised position—that of a single Black mother in Panther Burn, Mississippi—to another, by agreeing to marry a man who intends to take her to a city she does not know, and whose religion she associates with constriction. Roselily is not unhappy about her decision, but the story focuses on the complicated, knotty internal debate going on in her head about what it means to lose her freedom and agency as a self-supporting mother.

The central conflict of the story is set up immediately: a tension between Northern and Southern models for Black American identity and agency. The religious and cultural clash between Roselily and her groom is not only a sticking point in her mind. In many ways, their union represents the larger issues of Black identity in the era. Throughout the Civil Rights movement, Black Southerners—particularly religious Black Southerners—believed that real change was possible within racist communities, while Black Northerners, many of whom adopted Islam, were more likely to advocate for a departure from racist systems and communities. Roselily embodies the first way of thinking, that of Martin Luther King Jr., while the groom embodies the second, that of Malcolm X.

Roselily knows that the groom sees their marriage as more than the merging of their lives: he sees it as rescuing her from a place where she cannot be free. Aware of his negative view of the South, she is conscious of how the location of their wedding reveals the racism and poverty he expects to find there. When cars full of White people go by, the South’s legacy of racism immediately intrudes on her vision of herself as a little girl in her mother’s wedding dress. The ground itself dirties the dress, symbolizing the way her impoverished upbringing in the South has marred her in her husband’s eyes.

Roselily’s own feelings on the question of whether the South or the North will allow her more agency are far more complicated. She sees types of bondage everywhere, both in Panther Burn and Chicago: the patriarchy, the church, poverty, marriage itself, and her own narrowing choices as a single mother. All of these institutions promise freedom but ultimately require some kind of submission, and her reflections on them are punctuated by images of slavery: the people at the wedding are gathered “like cotton to be weighed” and “she thinks of ropes, chains, handcuffs, his religion” (3-4). The preacher Roselily wants to strike is a symbol of how her Christian home has stood in the way of her freedom. At the same time, while marrying the groom is a chance for freedom and respect, Roselily knows that it comes “in robe and veil,” meaning she will have to follow the customs of Islam, which are unfamiliar, and will be expected to be a subservient wife and to have more children (7).

Though she is not sure she loves her groom, there is a difference between the oppression of marriage and the other types of oppression Roselily has faced. The South, capitalism, and the church appear solely as systems of control. When she thinks about the groom’s understanding of her condition, Roselily means her condition as a Black Southern woman who has been oppressed by these systems of control. The groom wants to make Roselily’s life better by removing her from that state. As the wedding draws to a close, though, and the groom intends to hustle her to Chicago, she is not comforted by this fact. In seeing her as someone who needs rescuing, she realizes, the groom does not see who she really is.

The idea that the North is superior to the South is further complicated by Roselily’s relationship with the father of her fourth child, a man from the North who saw Roselily as incompatible with his ideals of education and etiquette. The fact that he took their son with him, back to New England, stokes two anxieties in Roselily: that she is not fit to be with someone from the North, and that moving North will change her in ways she doesn’t want. Though the North supposedly promises greater choice and financial security, Roselily is unconvinced that she will feel more free and more secure there.

The stream-of-consciousness style of the story amplifies this disconnect between the role Roselily is moving into and the person that she is. Walker juxtaposes the preacher’s minimal pronouncements with the expansiveness of Roselily’s thoughts, which respond to and diverge from the language of the ceremony. This narrative style enables the reader to perceive Roselily’s mental state and to attribute qualities to her based on how she thinks: the sheer volume of Roselily’s language in relation to each short phrase of the ceremony represents an anxious mind that is filled with doubt even while retaining a complicated sense of self. Roselily is complex, perceptive, and open to change, but the ceremony seeks to circumscribe that expansiveness and to put her within the boundaries of a single role: wife.

Altogether, “Roselily” is a portrait of a Black woman who both recognizes her place in American history and is far more than her condition within it. Though she worries about the new kind of subservience she is stepping into, Roselily makes the choice that she believes best promises her a measure of dignity. One of the central tragedies of living in a society that is dominated by racist and patriarchal thought is the erasure of the individual who is oppressed by those systems of thought. “Roselily” highlights that tragedy by showing the reader the complex humanity of the main character.